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The carbon capture package includes a bill, introduced Wednesday, for the United States to work toward a global goal of planting a trillion trees. It also features an expansion of a tax break approved by Congress in 2018 and signed by President Trump for companies that use carbon capture technology to trap carbon from fossil fuel or industrial plants. The new bill would make the so-called 45Q tax credit permanent, increasing the amount paid to companies and lowering the threshold of captured carbon to qualify for it. Another bill looks to boost research, development, and deployment of carbon capture technology...

Many on the left love to talk about the social cost of carbon dioxide emissions, but what about the social benefits? A new study by climate, economics, and statistical experts raises serious questions about the most popular social cost of carbon models and finds that carbon dioxide emissions have resulted in net positive benefits for society. This updated information should give policymakers pause as legislative sessions convene across the country. The social cost of carbon (SCC) is an estimate of the long-term dollar cost for each ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere. The SCC is being used...

Across the country, policymakers at all levels of government are exploring initiatives to address climate change. New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act remains one of the most ambitious, with its requirement that “the statewide electrical demand system will be zero emissions” by 2040. So how do we get to a zero-emission system? The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) is working on a market enhancement that could not only help lead New York to success, but could also serve as a model for the nation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our proposal is to incorporate the social...

Hours after Microsoft Corp. pledged to eliminate its carbon emissions within a decade earlier this month, the company was forced to fire up fossil fuel generators to power its corporate campus in Fargo, N.D. The software giant ran the diesel-burning machines for about five hours to keep the lights and heat on for 1,600 employees. It is one of about 100 big companies in the Fargo region ordered to do so by the local electric cooperative, which faced high demand for power. Microsoft receives a significant discount on its electricity rates in exchange for using backup power a few times...

The next frontier in California’s battle against pollution: lawn equipment. State air regulators are laying long-term plans to phase out gasoline-powered devices like leaf blowers and lawn mowers, saying they can produce more noxious emissions than cars. Plenty of Bay Area cities are already acting: At least eight have banned gas-powered blowers, and more restrict their use during times of day or up to a certain noise level. Novato may soon join the list. “What I think we need to realize is that we have to do something different for climate change in the world,” said Novato Mayor Pro Tem...

America’s energy sources, like booming oil and crumbling coal, have defied projections and historical precedents over the last decade. ... unexpectedly, ... In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that in 2019, the U.S. would be producing about six million barrels of oil a day. The reality? We're now producing 12 million barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, EIA projected oil prices would be more than $100 a barrel. They're currently hovering around $60 a barrel. What’s happening: A pair of extraction methods — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — have unlocked far more oil and gas than experts...

**SNIP** CO2 is a byproduct of many different types of human activity and, as we continue to destroy forests and foliage that help scrub the air and provide humans and other animals with breathable air, the amount of CO2 in our air gradually climbs. Studies have shown that too much CO2 in the air can trigger cognitive issues, decreasing the ability of a person to focus and hinder learning. Getting a few breaths of oxygen-rich “fresh” air tends to clear that up, but in a future where fresh air becomes harder and harder to come by, it could lead to...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — In a ruling hailed as an “immense victory for climate justice,” the Netherlands’ top court ruled Friday in favor of activists who have for years been seeking legal orders to force the Dutch government into cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Activists in a packed chamber of the Supreme Court in The Hague erupted into applause and cheers as Presiding Judge Kees Streefkerk rejected the government’s appeal against earlier rulings ordering the government to cut emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels. The Supreme Court upheld lower courts’ rulings that...

Remember when President Barack Obama was running around telling everyone how he’d convinced China to get serious about cutting its carbon dioxide emissions? A new report shows that Obama was easily duped. Over the course of three years, Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to, he said, agree to “climate targets” (in 2014), “lay out additional actions” (in 2015), and sign the Paris Agreement (2016). In typical Obama understatement, he declared that “we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.” Of course, anyone who looked at what China was promising could see...

Silver bullet to hit us allMikhail Voytenko November 13, 2019 4:09 am A silver bullet hits shipping, killing everything on its’ path, in form of new research commissioned by campaign groups Seas At Risk and Transport and Environment. “Speed reduction is the closest thing to a silver bullet the IMO will ever see,” said Seas at Risk’s senior policy advisor John Maggs. “We’ve got a win from a climate point of view, we’ve got a win from a human health point of view, we’ve got a win for marine nature, we’ve got a potential safety gain, and up to a...

NASA’s Curiosity rover returned some seriously surprising data to Earth earlier this year, with readings of elevated methane levels that were hard to explain. Subsequent tests attempted to pin down the cause of the higher-than-expected readings but scientists have yet to come up with a definitive answer. Now, as questions about methane continue to swirl, scientists studying the behavior of gasses on Mars have noticed that oxygen on the Red Planet also acts much differently than it does on Earth. The observations were made in the Gale Crater, which the rover has called home since it landed there back in...

Given the relentless drumbeat of terrifying claims about the alleged perils of global warming, uninformed people might be inclined to assume that human use of fossil fuels is causing so much havoc that the atmosphere is in danger of being dominated by carbon dioxide, the most vilified molecule in history. As a matter of scientific fact, CO2 comprises a virtually infinitesimal part of the air that blankets our planet. Over geological time, CO2 has reached as high as 8,000 parts per million. The current concentration of 400 parts per million is at the low end of the average over millions...

Despite the ever present wailing from green activists that we are sitting on a “methane catastrophe”, it’s simply business as usual for Earth in the Arctic. Even Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS thinks the issue is “implausible”. This study further confirms that the issue is just another emotional overblown green issue of no merit.Methane seepage from the Arctic seabed occurring for millions of yearsFrom the Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and EnvironmentMethane gas flares, up to 800 meters high, rise from the Arctic Ocean floor. That is the size of the tallest building in the world, Burj...

On Monday, President Trump took the step he promised in 2017 to officially withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, which every other country on Earth has signed. This is not America first; once again, it’s America isolated.

During the past 2.6 million years, Earth’s climate has alternated between warm periods known as interglacials, when conditions were similar to those of today, and cold glacials, when ice sheets spread across North America and northern Europe. Before about 1 million years ago, the warm periods recurred every 40,000 years, but after that, the return period lengthened to an average of about 100,000 years. It has often been suggested that a decline in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was responsible for this fundamental change. Writing in Nature, Yan et al.1 report the first direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations...

From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25. An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening...

We do not know how much carbon dioxide was in Earth's atmosphere prior to the 1930s. Devices to measure carbon dioxide went through a difficult, slow, irregular development. Reliable devices to measure carbon dioxide were available around 1930. "The measurement of carbon dioxide (CO2) was first developed in the early 1900s; however, it was complex and of limited clinical use. " See: Thomas Nowicki; Shawn London, "Carbon Dioxide Detector," National Center for Biotechnology Information. The technology was slowly developed and produced a useable machine only around the year 1930. Guy Stewart Callendar -- who dreamed up the global warming scare...

Costs for renewable power generation have dropped fast, but they will not improve 10-fold anymore - physical limits will be reached...Common comparisons of renewables vs. conventional power generation are misleading. One cannot compare marginal costs for intermittent power with costs for base power...[This is the best essay on this subject I have ever read]

The Boknis Eck Observatory might've been "forcibly removed" from a bay in Germany, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel said. Data transmission from the underwater sensors suddenly cut out one night in August, GEOMAR said. When divers went to investigate at the observatory site, they found nothing but a shredded cable that once anchored it. The observatory, planted in Kiel's Eckernförde Bay in 2016, consists of two "desk-sized" racks: One acts as a power source, tethered to the coast by a cable, and the other contains the sensors that transmit data back to shore. Both were missing...

Just as the state forces Battery cars onto Colorado consumers, emerging evidence consistently show the so-called “zero-emission vehicles” pollute more than internal combustion vehicles. The latest evidence comes in a report by the German-based IFO Institute for Economic Research, released about the same time Colorado air commissioners voted 8-1 to adopt California’s “Zero Emission Vehicle” (ZEV) standards. The new rule requires at least 5% of any automotive company’s vehicles for sale in Colorado run on electricity. ... We all want clean air. Hickenlooper and Polis probably believe battery cars advance the goal. No credible evidence suggests they do any such...